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LETTER IV

You enter again upon your favourite topic, genuineness and authenticity. I shall not repeat what I have already said. I confess my great surprise at your laying such stress upon the most trifling and false of your arguments. You now strive to prove, that a book may contain a true history, although it should be anonymous. Pray, my Lord, do you think, that to prove a book spurious, when it is believed to be genuine, is a demonstration of the truth of the contents? You thus leave us uncertain whether Joshua be a genuine book. You have sadly confused yourself in the maze you have created. To put it beyond a doubt that the sun stood still, you appeal to the book of Jasher, which Joshua mentions in the following words, "Is not this written in the book of Jasher?" And in like manner, you refer to other books frequently quoted as authorities in the Bible. Does your zeal blind you so far as not to let you perceive, that this very argument may with redoubled strength be retorted against you? for if an author, who is said to write his own history, appeals to another book for a proof of his actions, that book must be of much greater authority than his own: we cannot avoid believing the writer of the work alluded to had better information. In short, the book appealed to contains the only authentic testimony. Now, permit me to ask you, who could be better authority than Joshua himself, writing at a time when we must suppose many of his soldiers who had witnessed the miracle were alive? What is this anterior book which Joshua respects so much? Was it written by himself, then it would be idle to quote it; and, at any rate, whoever had written it, it is evident that the author of the book of Joshua has no proofs of his own, but rests solely upon the book of the Holy, or of Jasher. This circumstance proves clearly, that the writer of the Book of Joshua composed his book out of some more ancient memoirs, which being lost, we can say no more of their authority than for that of any old tales. You talk of the public records of the Jews as confidently as a Member of Parliament speaks of the papers in the Tower. Do you know at what period the Jews began to keep written records, and do you also know, whether those that were kept existed when the books of the Old Testament were compiled? Had you been instructed in these particulars, and had you been not altogether divested of candour, you might have informed your readers, that, previous to the time of kings, we have not a shadow of proof of the existence of any historical records among the Jews. We, no doubt, read, that there was a book of the law of Moses, in which Joshua wrote something too respecting the renewal of a covenant. This seems to be the only written record among the Jews, and it contained nothing but religious precepts, or the law, strictly speaking. In Joshua, chap. viii. ver. 31, we read, "As Moses the servant of the Lord commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses and ver. 32, He wrote there upon the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he wrote in the presence of the children of Israel and ver. 35, He read all the words of the law, the blessings, and curses, according to all that is written in the book of the law of the Lord, and there was not a word of all that Moses commanded which Joshua read not before the congregation of Israel." We know, likewise, that this law was written in the circumference of an altar composed of twelve stones. This is the only book either Moses or Joshua were ever said to have written; the writers of the Pentateuch, and of the other books, certainly never meant to inscribe them to Moses, Joshua, &c.; they bore the names of books of Moses, of Joshua, Judges, &c. because they treated of these personages. What then do you infer from the quotation of books by the Bible authors, except that they all wrote in very modern times, when they wanted the corroboration of more ancient books, whose date and authority we are equally strangers to? This book of the law, which you so triumphantly mention as a book written and existing a few years after Moses, turns out to be nothing more than what is contained in Exodus, chap. xx. to chap. xxiv. to which Joshua added some detail about the third covenant of God.

I beg the reader will observe, that the writer of the Book of Joshua does not mention the second, third, or any other book of Moses, but simply notices the book of the law of God. Now this great book was written upon twelve stones, and in Exodus we find the precise commandment of Moses to build the altar, and to read the commandments at the feast of tabernacles; so that it contained not one line of history, and could have no authority. It was a law written upon stones, which Moses, in Exod. chap. xxiv. v. 7, is said to have read to the people: "And he took the book of the covenant, and read it in the audience of the people." This covenant, and particularly the repetition of it after the disobedience of the Jews, is the only part of the Scriptures that Moses ordered to be preserved with a religious care. Nothing of the most important parts of Genesis or the other five books is ever mentioned in the commandments of the law of God: the writer of the law certainly knew not that the Pentateuch existed. Had Moses written such a work, would he have failed to recommend to the Levites to keep the precious records of mankind, the sublime account of the creation? Did not the whole of the faith of the Jews depend on their being acquainted with the history of their forefathers, who were under the immediate protection of God? The ten commandments every person knows from the light of nature; no nation has ever mistaken them; but the origin of mankind is a subject of great darkness, and which the Jews ought to have preserved most carefully. Certain, however, it is, that excepting a few rites, the Jews lost not only their books, but even the recollection of their feasts, during their captivity. The other books referred to in the Bible prove, that those left are mere collections of borrowed stories, and pretended abridgements of books of greater authority, which are unfortunately lost, and leave a wide field for scepticism, particularly upon improbable or contradictory accounts. As to the belief that the books of the Old Testament are inspired, it is a tale, which, after what we have stated, even a child would laugh at.

You next seriously endeavour to corroborate the ridiculous miracle of the sun and moon standing still. You are as unsuccessful in historical as in scientifical arguments. The story in question is so stupid, that the bare mention of it marks a man's credulity, so as to render him the object of compassion. That an ignorant fanatic should attempt to defend such absurdities, would be a matter of no surprise; but to witness a Regius Professor of Divinity, a natural philosopher, bring forward facts from profane history to prove the truth of so bare-faced a lie, denotes at least your want of prudence. I cannot persuade myself that you seriously believed what you wrote; I cannot think you capable of falling at once into the most gross astronomical and historical error. I shall state the matter briefly. There was a tradition in all antiquity, and particularly among the Egyptians, relating to that motion of the earth's axis which has been observed by astronomers, and whose complete revolution round the four cardinal points takes up no less than 9,160,000 years. In the course of this revolution, it necessarily happens, that the sun will rise where it sets, that north will be south, and so on. The Egyptian priests pretended that this revolution had taken place in their country without changing the climate, while the Babylonians maintained, in the time of Alexander, that 140,000 years had elapsed since their first astronomical observations. This, no doubt, was the time that must have elapsed since the earth moved north and south. The Egyptian priests, long before Herodotus, had lost their knowledge of astronomy, which accounts for their mistake. It is evident, that the displacement of the earth's axis must be accompanied by the heaviest gravitating matter, and, therefore, what is now land, has been and will, in the course of ages, become sea. Now, my Lord, what has the Egyptian tradition to do with the sun stopped by the robber Joshua? What connection has the stoppage of the sun, or rather the earth's motion, with the sun rising where it sets? Were the thing possible, the sun would nevertheless rise in the east. Besides, does Joshua say the sun changed its course? Had this been the case, (I am ashamed even of the supposition), how could the earth change its axis in an hour, without shattering the whole globe, without inundating vast tracts of country, and tearing others asunder to reestablish the equilibrium of gravity? Study and consider; do not attempt to ridicule the little learning of Thomas Paine, when you fall into such absurdities. Read Chinese history, and you will find that their careful astronomers did not perceive the long day and night. It was probably the sun of Judea only that altered its course; they did not seem to be enlightened by the same luminary. Those who believed that heaven was made of crystal, could find no difficulty in crediting this silly story. I have insisted so much upon this, because you ought to know the common principles of astronomy, and somewhat of history. Here again you appeal to the book of Jasher: it deserves no more consideration. To deem an appeal to a lost book evidence of a prodigy, because the author affirms it, is a degree of credulity which may gain the kingdom of heaven; but, in the republic of letters, such believer will pass for a very contemptible reasoner.

These are the miracles, and the histories, better attested than the History of the Twelve Knights Of Charles the Great, and such other foolish tales. Surely, none can believe that 19,000 men fought against the Midianites, and murdered a prodigious number, without having lost a man, and disbelieve the famous battles of the knights, in many of which six men fought several thousands; the conversation of the devil with Cromwell, or the miraculous appearance of God to almost all the knights and warriors among the Catholics. The sacred phial of Rheims, and the chapel of Loretto, were both conveyed in a manner you know well, and which few men in the two countries dare controvert. They too appeal to their books of Jasher. The tale of making the sun stand still has not even the merit of novelty; this luminary had long before stopt his career, out of respect to Bacchus. Neither is the shower of hail-stones new, for Jupiter of old sent a shower of hail upon the rebellious sons of Neptune.

As to Joshua having written the book that goes under his name, we have, besides what has been stated, the strongest evidence against the genuineness of this performance. The death of Joshua is recorded in chap. xxiv. and it is related exactly in the same style as what precedes it. The writer even mentions several events posterior to the death of the son of Nun. You have passed over the arguments of Thomas Paine drawn from this passage, "The Jebusites dwelt with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day." It was natural for you to overlook a passage, which demonstrates that the book of Joshua was not written until after David, when, and not before, the conquest of the Jebusites took place. It is beyond a doubt, that they never dwelt with the Jews in the time of Joshua, since, in the first part of the above quoted passage, he says, "As for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out." How then did the Jews inhabit Jerusalem in the days of Joshua? I refer the reader to the Age of Reason, and to an answer to it by Mr. David Wilson, for further information, on this head. In the latter, he will be amazed at the weak subterfuges used by the author to evade the strength of the objection by Mr. Paine. But this is not the only event related in Joshua, which did not take place till some time after his death. Almost the whole of chap. xvii. contains facts of this nature. Where the portion of Manasseh is described, it is said, in ver. 12, "Yet the children of Manasseh could not drive out the inhabitants of those cities, but the inhabitants would dwell in that land." It is added, "And it came to pass, when the children of Israel waxed strong, that they put the Canaanites to tribute; but did not utterly drive them out." Now this certainly did not take place during the life of Joshua, for in the very same chapter, he promises those of the tribe of Manasseh success against the Canaanites. In the preceding chapter, v. 10, there is a passage of the same kind, "And they (the Ephraimites) drove not out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer; but the Canaanites dwelt among the Ephraimites unto this day, and some under tribute." This needs no comment: let any person ask himself when this came to pass, and they will at once find out the credit due to books containing such shameful anachronisms and falsehoods. In chapter first of Judges, purporting to contain the history of the Jews after Joshua, the reader will find a faithful copy of the passages quoted, not excepting the taking of Jerusalem. Let himc ompare ver. 8, 27, 28, 29, and following, with the detail of distribution of lots to the tribes, in chap. xvi. and xvii. of Joshua the same events are told in the very words, and apply to two different periods. This is a strong instance of the disorder that pervades the whole of these books, and how undeserving of credit, even in the most probable events, is what you call sacred writ. We are constantly reading over accounts of the same events, sometimes said to be written by dead men, and never marking time; for it came to pass, which is the Bible phrase, does not fix the period when the event took place. These books bear all the marks of being the productions of some persons at a very late period, and to have suffered great interpolations. Joshua is, in the face of it, a continuation of Deuteronomy, Judges of Joshua, and so on through the remainder.

You pass on to Judges. It requires neither great knowledge nor ingenuity to discover, that this book is an unconnected farrago put together by some unknown person. You do not attempt to say any thing in its favour. Sad falling off from the paths of faith! Formerly it would have been a heresy to assert that Judges was a book of no authority: now, even a Bishop has nothing to say in its defence. You then proceed to Ruth, and endeavour to blot out the apparent infamy of her conduct, with what success, I leave the reader to judge, after he has perused her history. Next follow your subtle distinctions between the inspired and non-inspired part of the Bible, which may be very intelligible to an inspired Bishop, but cannot fail to appear a mere dream to a man in his senses. Notwithstanding Austin and your other brethren, this distinction rests upon nothing but fancy. Your request is very moderate. "Receive the Bible," you say, "as composed by upright and well-informed, though in some points, fallible men, (for I exclude all fallibility when they profess to deliver the word of God), and you must receive it as a book revealed to you in many parts by the express will of God, and, in other parts, relating to you the ordinary history of the times." Bravo! A Catholic is as reasonable in his demands. He only asks a little credulity to believe the inspired when they profess to be so. It is truly a childish request, begging the question at every word. To believe the Bible to be inspired is the grand point. The reasoning you employ is in perfect consonance with the absurdity of your wishes. You disbelieve a history if you find it inconsistent, but revere it, and swear by the author, if he wrote by inspiration. Swedenburgh could not wish more faith in his adherents. You say receive it, as the inquisitors said imprimatur; but philosophers weigh the ground of their belief; they detect the Bible writers, prophets, and inspired men, in palpable contradictions in history; and you will obstinately insist on our believing the most improbable of all their stories, because their absurdity persuades the faithful that they were revealed by their God in dreams. – You have acknowledged yourself, in a subsequent letter, that the history and mystery of the Bible are so interwoven, that if one falls the other cannot be maintained. Why did God mingle his important and sublime precepts with such ridiculous trash, so as to induce mankind to disbelieve them both? Suppose I should meet a peasant coming from a fair, pretending he had seen the king with his guards, and if I should find this to be untrue, would I not deserve to be laughed at, if I credited that he had wrestled with a spirit, or that he was carried up to heaven? This, however, is the case with the Bible. Here we are told that the sun stood Still to protract the bloodshed of that villain Joshua, while, in another place, we read that a city was taken 370 years before that event. Your vaunted prophets were soothsayers, psalmists, and orators, who were generally employed in writing the public records. It is a word applied in the Bible to holy men. These prophets, like the augurs of the heathen, were often detected in falsehoods, and, in the time of Samuel, it would appear, by the Bible itself, that to raise ghosts was a trade as common as that of tailors in our days.

You now come to Samuel. You are candid enough to acknowledge with Hartley, that he could not have been the author of the second book, nor of most of the first that go under his name, yet this has been the opinion of the church; and I know of no direct proofs that he wrote the remainder: by what logic do you or Hartley conclude, that Samuel wrote any part of the books ascribed to him? An author is proved not to have written most part of a work ascribed to him, who then would, without direct proofs, proclaim him the writer of some small passage, or any particular part of the work? Who but a clergyman would build a system upon a mutilated, spurious, and insignificant collection of absurdities and wonders? It is, I allow, probable that Samuel wrote something: your quotations prove no more; but what this was, we are, I presume, equally unacquainted with. That the scribes also composed some records of the lives of their kings, I will not deny. The question is, what degree of credit does the mutilated, contradictory, and fabulous collection, said to be made out of these records, deserve?

In the time of Charles the Great, some persons probably recorded his actions. Is this a reason for any man to believe the fabulous legends we have of him, written in the dark centuries? The legends of the Egyptian and Greek gods, and their collection of oracles, were not only credited by whole nations, but proclaimed true by councils much wiser than the synagogue. The records of the saints were undoubtedly made few years after their death, in ages far more enlightened, after the invention of the press, written by the then most learned men of society, (the monks), who certainly were not inferior to the Jewish scribes, yet these legends contain often nothing but collections of absurdities and miracles. Read the Flores Sanctorum of the Romish church, and you there will find miracles in every page, and the lives of saints a tissue of prodigies. I need not add, that very few learned men among the Papists give credit to the absurdities contained in these books. It is even the opinion of the best informed men, that the monks have written lives of saints who never existed.

You acknowledge the wickedness of the kings of Israel and Judah; but you take care to observe, that this was not owing to their religion. Impertinent assertion! Was not Saul dethroned because he was humane enough not to cut Agag in pieces? Did not the Lord Jehovah love the man after his own heart, who put the miserable inhabitants of Rabah under saws, axes, and arrows of iron; who made them pass through the brick-kiln? Did not this Jehovah approve the base murder of Adonias? Was it the same Jehovah who said to Jonah, that he was not so unjust as to sacrifice the whole city of Nineveh for their sins, because there were thousands in it who did not know between good and evil; and who yet, the Jews tell us, commanded the extermination of whole nations, without even sparing the little children? Did not the plagues which he sent to Pharaoh and David fall upon thousands of innocent individuals? At least, do not the Jewish books affirm it? Such horrors could only be respected by the Jews; such absurd miracles could only be credited by the most ignorant of men. You pretend, that the partiality of God to the Jews proceeded from their being the only nation that believed in the unity of God, and who have preserved their belief on this head unshaken till the present day. Are you in earnest, can you assert this before men of common information? Do you take Englishmen for idiots to be deceived by your assertions? Are you ignorant of the adoration of the Ethiopians? Do you forget that the wise men among the heathens said, Colitur forma pro Jove? Did you never peruse any account, of the Chinese, or of the Hindoos? Do they not admit one supreme agent, an all-wise, intelligent, &c. being, and whose inferior agents they represent by symbols? The Hindoos have even all the metaphysical refinement of our divines; and their definition of God is fully as perspicuous as that given in our Catechism. I have avoided to give long extracts in this pamphlet; but, that the authority of an English Bishop may not be a presumption to many that I am making false assertions, I shall transcribe a passage from a commentary upon the Reig Beid, a book unquestionably of the remotest antiquity.

"Glory be to Goneish! that which is exempt from all desires of the senses, the same is the mighty Lord. He is simple, and than him there is nothing greater. Brehm, (the spirit of God), is absorbed in self-contemplation; the same is the mighty Lord who is present in every part of space. Brehm is one, and to him there is no second; such is truly Brehm. His omniscience is self-inspired, and its comprehension includes all possible species," &c. It is true, we are not here told that God is a jealous God, that he visiteth the iniquities of the father even unto the fourth generation. I could adduce fifty passages from the Greeks and others to prove my position, but it is needless. The point is still to know whether these notions make men better, whether they are founded on truth, and, indeed, whether all gods are not the work of the fancy of man, nature allegorised. Primus in orbe Deos fecit timor, says the philosopher; can you disprove it? I suspect not, and that all the subtle reasoning of divines destroy themselves. The world is the ultimate of human reason. We adore the idols either of our hands or of the brain, and mistake them for existences. The region of chimeras exists beyond the universe; our prattling upon it is but a play of words. Jehovah himself, when he said, I am that I am, called himself pretty plainly Pan, or the great whole.

But if the unity of God be the only gracious belief in the eyes of the Creator, I do not see that Christians are entitled to his favour, because they make him three. What was the belief of the Jews? Had they any very refined ideas of their God? They thought him corporeal, incessantly speaking and moving among men, jealous, revengeful, powerful, whose angels ate with Abraham, who himself strove to kill Moses in a public house; they imagined him repenting of his deeds; and, in all respects, a poor contemptible being, the offspring of Jewish fancy. He is throughout the Bible an Asiatic Sultan, who, like the merciful God of Mahomet, puts to the sword, and smites with plagues thousands, as a tribute to his infinite mercy. I refer the reader to the collection of extracts from the Bible, in a subsequent letter, for proofs of my assertions. The Jews admitted, besides other gods, such as Chemosh, several beings subordinate to God, but superior to man, as the serpent which tempted the mother of mankind. They had exterminating angels and cherubims, the Elohim or Genii that made the world, &c. But why dwell upon such topics, when it is evident that all the Jewish mythology is of Chaldean origin, and our theology a copy of that of Plato?

You proceed in your attempt to reconcile the justice of God with his goodness, and, in the height of your reverie, you imagine that the sufferings of the Jews were parts of a grand scheme for the general good of mankind. What, and when are we to see the good effects of their barbarities? We may see reason counteracting the evil of superstition, rendering men humane; but I apprehend, that, if your reasoning was generally adopted, every highwayman would be much inclined to think himself sent by Providence for good and wise purposes, and if chance should bring about a happy event at the end of his career, which he thought the consequence of his deeds, he would triumph in his crimes, and, like Moor in the Robbers, exclaim, "If for ten I have destroyed, you make but one man blest, my soul may yet be saved!" This has been the language of persecutors. They destroy mankind to make them happy in the next world – tortures, burning, and beheading, are but purifications. The worst is, that the famous divine scheme of general good, has never been one jot more advanced than when the Jews were enduring the greatest calamities, and committing atrocities. I count not the effects of reason, for faith is alone the godly faculty; reason destroys it. I close my observations upon this subject with repeating the old question of Epicurus, which your brethren have as yet left unanswered; either God can prevent evil and does not choose it, or he chooses it and wants power to avert calamities from his creatures. In the first instance, he is a malevolent despot, a character we ought to abhor; in the second, we see him an impotent and secondary being, which raises our contempt. Reconcile this with his infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, and show us that he is not formed after the image of man, or else let unbelievers hold their opinions in peace.